After several minutes of simulating blocked airways, fluid in lungs and vomiting, an Israeli instructor, speaking in Hebrew, told the Palestinian medics that the dummy they were treating was going to live.

"The first 30 minutes are critical -- you can determine if a person lives or dies," said Maskit Bendel, director of the Physician's For Human Rights' "Occupied Territories Project."

During the training, instructors also simulate bombing and attack scenarios with smoke machines and sound effects to teach participants how to treat wounded under fire.

Such violence is routine for many of the medics, especially in Gaza, which Israel has bombarded with air strikes in recent months to battle militants who have increased their rocket attacks against the Jewish state.

TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS

Some 200 Palestinian medical workers have taken part in the Israeli training courses, begun soon after a Palestinian uprising erupted in 2000. The sessions are conducted in Hebrew, Arabic and English.

The latest two-day course, the second to involve simulated casualties and sound effects, took place this week at the Chaim Sheba Medical Centre near Tel Aviv.

Israel has killed more than 370 Palestinians in Gaza, about half of them civilians, since it began a major offensive against militants in June following the abduction of an Israeli soldier, Gaza hospital officials and residents say.

Three Israeli soldiers have been killed and a woman in an Israeli border town died in a rocket strike during that period.

With tensions high, Israeli roadblocks and frequent closures of border crossings, especially to Gaza, have made it difficult for Palestinians to attend the training sessions.

"We facilitate everything, their travel papers. The request procedure is very difficult and unpredictable and dependent on the civil administration," Bendel said, referring to an Israeli military-run authority that issues permits.

"The medics from the West Bank were given permission (to attend the current course) just three days ago," she said.

Raphael Walden, a member of the Physicians for Human Rights' board of directors and head of surgery at the Sheba centre, said the group has a strong commitment "to help our Palestinian neighbours in these difficult times".

"We have a common enemy -- disease," he said.

Baqer said he would pass on what he learned in the Israeli course to his ambulance crews in Gaza.

"I will tell them that we learned something good here," he said. "There is no difference when it comes to the health of an Arab or a Jew. All that matters is that it is a person."

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.

Russian ex-spy may be sick from radioactive poison

Last Updated: 2006-11-21 13:22:26 -0400 (Reuters Health)

By Kate Kelland

LONDON - A former Russian spy fighting for his life in a British hospital may have been given poison in a radioactive form to render it more lethal, the toxicologist treating him said on Tuesday.

Russia has dismissed as "nonsense" claims its agents poisoned the former spy, Alexander Litvinenko, 41, a persistent critic of President Vladimir Putin. Friends say they believe he is the victim of a Kremlin-backed plot.

He is now in intensive care in a London hospital, suffering from poisoning with thallium, a chemical element that can cause a slow, painful death over weeks, even with treatment.

Britain's anti-terrorism police are investigating the case, which could have far-reaching diplomatic consequences. If Moscow is found to have a hand in the poisoning, it would be the first incident of its kind in the West since the Cold War.

Questioned at a news conference, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said she had not raised the case with Moscow.

Russia's SVR spy network repeated Moscow's denial of blame.

"There is absolutely no interest for us in occupying ourselves with such activities. Of course everyone has worth, but this person is not worth enough...to poison the atmosphere of warm relations between Moscow and London," SVR spokesman Sergei Ivanov said. "May God give him health."

Toxicologist John Henry, who is treating Litvinenko, said he now thought the thallium may have been in a more deadly radioactive form.

"Mr. Litvinenko has got some symptoms consistent with thallium poisoning, and he has also got symptoms consistent with some other type of poisoning -- so it's not 100 percent thallium," Henry told reporters outside the hospital.

"It could be radioactive thallium," he said.

Litvinenko said he fell ill three weeks ago after meeting a source at a London sushi restaurant while studying the slaying of journalist Anna Politkovskaya, another Putin critic gunned down at her Moscow apartment last month.

POISON SWALLOWED

Henry said Litvinenko apparently swallowed the poison. Its exact composition may never be known: "If it was a radioactive poison with a short half-life, it may have gone."

He said Litvinenko was very ill and it was too early to say whether he would survive. "At the moment he is not getting better, but he is holding up."

Scientists say thallium poisoning causes slow death by interfering with neurons and other cells: "a complete disaster for an organism -- there are catastrophic effects," said Dr. Andrea Sella, chemistry lecturer at University College London.

"My gut feeling at the moment is whoever did this wanted not only to do him harm but also to send a message to others -- mess with us and we make you die a lingering death. And to add radioactivity into the brew is an additional way of fuelling people's fears."

In Moscow, conspiracy theories are swirling. "I don't rule out that Russian special services had had enough of the talkative Litvinenko," Communist parliamentarian Viktor Ilyukhin told Reuters. But he also said Putin's enemies could be maximising bad publicity to discredit the Kremlin.

Copyright © 2006 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Reuters. Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in the content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. Reuters and the Reuters sphere logo are registered trademarks and trademarks of the Reuters group of companies around the world.